ESA's Cluster quartet prepares for its final Tango
Two-year mission bows out after 26 thanks to some heroic engineering
The European Space Agency's Cluster quartet is preparing for its final bow after Samba reentered Earth's atmosphere, with Tango due to follow tonight.
Samba lost contact at 21:26 UTC on August 31 and reentered at 21:39:38 UTC. Tango is expected to follow at 21:30:31 UTC tonight. The other two satellites, Rumba and Salsa, reentered in 2025 and 2024, respectively.
The final reentries close the book on a prodigiously long-lived quartet that exceeded even optimistic expectations, thanks in no small part to the ingenuity of engineers on the ground.
Cluster II launched in 2000 aboard two Soyuz rockets from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It replaced the original quartet, which was destroyed during the maiden flight of Ariane 5 in 1996, drawing on spare hardware and work already completed for the doomed spacecraft.
The four satellites were launched on a two-year mission...
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